Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

Getting Started with Home Assistant Webhooks & Writing to InfluxDB

If you’re already running or are familiar with Home Assistant, you’ve likely worked with integrations, maybe a few automations, and possibly MQTT as a way to wire devices together. But webhooks add another layer of flexibility that lets you level up your smart home into a fully-customized, intelligent network. Instead of relying on built-in integrations and being confined to the same local network, you can let external devices and services push events directly into Home Assistant.

VictoriaMetrics Virtual Meetup Q1 2026 - VictoriaMetrics Cloud Updates

VictoriaMetrics Cloud continues to mature as a secure, reliable, and cost-efficient observability platform. With PrivateLink now available across all regions, including Frankfurt, users can operate entirely without exposure to the public internet. Blue-green cluster deployments enable seamless, zero-downtime updates, while incremental backups ensure storage efficiency by capturing only what has changed. Operational visibility is improved with clearer alert states, showing Firing and Resolved conditions upfront. Security enhancements include stronger password policies and expanded authentication safeguards.

How to Test SQS Workflows Locally with LocalStack and OpenTelemetry

LocalStack lets you run SQS, Lambda, and S3 locally in Docker — but there's a hidden trap: OpenTelemetry's default AWS propagator doesn't work with free LocalStack. Here's how to set up end-to-end local testing with working trace propagation. Prathamesh works as an evangelist at Last9, runs SRE stories - where SRE and DevOps folks share their stories, and maintains o11y.wiki - a glossary of all terms related to observability.

Four types of incident alerts every team should know

Not every incident alert needs the same kind of response. One incident may need to wake someone up right away. Another may simply need to be picked up when the team starts work in the morning. Without a clear way to tell them apart, every incident feels equally urgent. That usually adds noise and makes incident response decisions harder than they need to be. This is where two questions help: In this guide, we’ll discuss what those questions mean and the four combinations that follow.

From Context to Commitment

If service-centric observability provides the control layer, the next question becomes more urgent. What happens when organizations pair context with automation that operates inside clear defined boundaries? During conversations at Nexus Live 2025, leaders did not describe automation as a futuristic aspiration. They described it as a necessary progression. However, the distinction they drew was important. Automation without context accelerates activity.

From PR to Production Without Leaving Your Cursor IDE | Harness Blog

TLDR: Today, Harness is introducing the Harness Cursor Plugin, bringing the power of the Harness AI-native software delivery platform directly into Cursor. This integration, along with the Harness Secure AI Coding hook for Cursor, allows developers and AI agents to move from code changes to vulnerability detection, CI/CD execution, security validation, approvals, deployments, and operational insight without leaving the editor. AI has completely changed how we write code.

AI writes the code. Who delivers it safely? | Harness Blog

The question for enterprise AI in 2026 is no longer just which model. It’s which harness. An agent harness is the system around the model. It decides what the agent remembers, what context it sees, what tools it can call, what it is allowed to do, and what happens when it is wrong. The model provides intelligence. The harness provides control. This is where the real engineering is happening.

Moving On From MCP: How We Built the Bindplane AI Skill

If you've spent any time wiring AI coding agents into developer platforms over the last year, you've probably reached for MCP. We did too. And after enough sessions watching context windows balloon and tool calls misfire, we started looking for something different. This is the story of what we built instead — a native AI skill for the Bindplane CLI — and the engineering decisions behind it.

Bindplane Now Ships With a Native AI Skill - Bring Your Own Agent

Today we're rolling out the Bindplane AI Skill, a built-in capability of the Bindplane CLI (v1.98+) that teaches your favorite AI coding tool how to work with Bindplane — natively, accurately, and without the setup headaches of traditional integrations. Read Part 2 of the Bindplane AI Skill series to learn more about how we built it and how it works with real-life examples.